If the earth could speak, it might offer words of gratitude to New England for inspiring the most persuasive environmental voices the nation has ever known. Perhaps, as some fear, the tipping point of the earth’s warming has already been reached—but that hasn’t silenced the indefatigable Bill McKibben, ardent environmentalist and lucid writer, who from […]
Yankee
Go find one of Kate Hepburn’s early movies from the 1930s: Bringing Up Baby or Holiday, for example. It’s almost shocking how modern she is, how different from the other women in those films. She’s all angles and intelligence—so sharp you could cut yourself on her. What’s she doing with all those moon-faced girls? How […]
Love a menu with historic ties? This collection of 21 fresh-but- familiar holiday recipes from the Yankee recipe archives is here to help.
Brandon Dole from Deep River, Connecticut, is an aspiring photographer with an interest in pinhole cameras. Pinhole photography is lensless photography — a tiny hole replaces the lens. Light passes through the hole forming an image in the camera. These photos were taken at Essex Steam Train, Essex, Connecticut. “I like the pinhole camera because […]
There’s a reason why fishermen won’t paint a boat blue…
The Pan-Mass Challenge — The Ride That Won’t Stop There are people who possess a gift they don’t really know they have, until something unexpected happens, and their life takes a turn, and then their gift becomes the life itself. For instance, Billy Starr. When his mother died from melanoma, he asked himself, “How can […]
In New England there’s cold and then there’s “braggin’ cold,” and those who live in the North Country know what that difference feels like. But there’s one particular kind of person who knows all about “braggin’ wind”: the weather observers who live and work on the 6,288-foot summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Their […]
Feisty Annie Smith Peck conquered the world’s highest peaks —and horrified her Rhode Island relatives in the process. Born into a traditional New England family in 1850—her father was a lawyer and businessman, her mother a direct descendant of Roger Williams—she mortified her parents when she vowed she would develop the strength and stamina to […]
Would there have been a Malcolm X or a Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. without W. E. B. Du Bois? Most likely, but the civil-rights world they led and shaped would undoubtedly have looked much different. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, at the dawn of Reconstruction, Du Bois died in 1963, during […]
Magazine
Samantha Smith | New England’s Gifts
In the summer of 1983 the most famous child in the world was Samantha Smith, the 10-year-old girl from Maine who sent a letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov: “My name is Samantha Smith … I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war …” Her subsequent journey to […]
Magazine
Winslow Homer | New England’s Gifts
Prouts Neck thrusts out into the Atlantic, exposed on three sides to the water and completely exposed to easterly storms, and the rugged, weatherbeaten rocks show the effects of the pounding surf. It was here that Winslow Homer was most at home for the last 27 years of his life. He captured the storm-whipped Maine […]
Photo/Art by Roger Tory Peterson Tanagers Few people in their lifetimes achieve worldwide influence. Fewer still have an impact that will endure for generations yet to come. Roger Tory Peterson is one of that latter group—a true rara avis. Starting with his own love of birds and of the natural world in which they belong, […]